Newsman's disappearance largely kept secret

FILE - In this Monday, May 18, 2009 file photo, Richard Engel attends the Peabody Awards held at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. More than a dozen heavily armed gunmen kidnapped and held NBC's chief foreign correspondent Engel and several colleagues for five days inside Syria, keeping them blindfolded and tied up before they finally escaped unharmed during a firefight between their captors and anti-regime rebels, Engel said Tuesday. (AP Photo/Charles Sykes, File)
— AP

FILE - In this Monday, May 18, 2009 file photo, Richard Engel attends the Peabody Awards held at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. More than a dozen heavily armed gunmen kidnapped and held NBC's chief foreign correspondent Engel and several colleagues for five days inside Syria, keeping them blindfolded and tied up before they finally escaped unharmed during a firefight between their captors and anti-regime rebels, Engel said Tuesday. (AP Photo/Charles Sykes, File)
/ AP

In this image made from video, NBC chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel exits a car after crossing back into Turkey, after they were freed unharmed following a firefight at a checkpoint after five days of captivity inside Syria, in Cilvegozu, Turkey, Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2012. Engel told the Turkish news agency Anadolu that he and his colleagues are "very happy to be out" and they are "very tired." (AP Photo/Anadolu via AP TV) TURKEY OUT, TV OUT— AP

In this image made from video, NBC chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel exits a car after crossing back into Turkey, after they were freed unharmed following a firefight at a checkpoint after five days of captivity inside Syria, in Cilvegozu, Turkey, Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2012. Engel told the Turkish news agency Anadolu that he and his colleagues are "very happy to be out" and they are "very tired." (AP Photo/Anadolu via AP TV) TURKEY OUT, TV OUT
/ AP

In this image made from video, NBC chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel, right, shakes hands with an unidentified person after crossing back into Turkey, after they were freed unharmed following a firefight at a checkpoint after five days of captivity inside Syria, in Cilvegozu, Turkey, Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2012. Engel told the Turkish news agency Anadolu that he and his colleagues are "very happy to be out" and they are "very tired." (AP Photo/Anadolu via AP TV) TURKEY OUT, TV OUT— AP

In this image made from video, NBC chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel, right, shakes hands with an unidentified person after crossing back into Turkey, after they were freed unharmed following a firefight at a checkpoint after five days of captivity inside Syria, in Cilvegozu, Turkey, Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2012. Engel told the Turkish news agency Anadolu that he and his colleagues are "very happy to be out" and they are "very tired." (AP Photo/Anadolu via AP TV) TURKEY OUT, TV OUT
/ AP

This image taken from undated amateur video posted on the Internet shows NBC chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel, center, with NBC Turkey reporter Aziz Akyavas, left, and NBC photographer John Kooistra, right, after they were taken hostage in Syria. More than a dozen heavily armed gunmen kidnapped and held Engel and several colleagues for five days inside Syria, keeping them blindfolded and tied up before they finally escaped unharmed during a firefight between their captors and anti-regime rebels, Engel said Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2012. The Arabic writing on the wall reads, "or we will burn."(AP Photo/Amateur Video)— AP

This image taken from undated amateur video posted on the Internet shows NBC chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel, center, with NBC Turkey reporter Aziz Akyavas, left, and NBC photographer John Kooistra, right, after they were taken hostage in Syria. More than a dozen heavily armed gunmen kidnapped and held Engel and several colleagues for five days inside Syria, keeping them blindfolded and tied up before they finally escaped unharmed during a firefight between their captors and anti-regime rebels, Engel said Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2012. The Arabic writing on the wall reads, "or we will burn."(AP Photo/Amateur Video)
/ AP

FILE - In this Monday, May 18, 2009 file photo, Richard Engel attends the Peabody Awards held at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. More than a dozen heavily armed gunmen kidnapped and held NBC's chief foreign correspondent Engel and several colleagues for five days inside Syria, keeping them blindfolded and tied up before they finally escaped unharmed during a firefight between their captors and anti-regime rebels, Engel said Tuesday. (AP Photo/Charles Sykes, File)— AP

FILE - In this Monday, May 18, 2009 file photo, Richard Engel attends the Peabody Awards held at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. More than a dozen heavily armed gunmen kidnapped and held NBC's chief foreign correspondent Engel and several colleagues for five days inside Syria, keeping them blindfolded and tied up before they finally escaped unharmed during a firefight between their captors and anti-regime rebels, Engel said Tuesday. (AP Photo/Charles Sykes, File)
/ AP

NEW YORK 
NBC was able to keep the abduction of chief Middle East correspondent Richard Engel in Syria largely a secret until he escaped late Monday because it persuaded some of this country's most prominent news organizations to hold back on the story.

Otherwise, the disappearance of Engel - probably the most high-profile international television reporter on a U.S. network - would have been big news.

Engel and three colleagues, producers Ghazi Balkiz and Aziz Akyavas and photographer John Kooistra, escaped during a firefight between rebels and their captors, forces sympathetic to the Syrian government. The journalists were dragged from their cars, kept bound and blindfolded and threatened with death.

NBC said it did not know what had happened to the men until after their escape. The first sign of trouble came last Thursday, when Engel did not check back with his office at an agreed-upon time.

The Associated Press learned of Engel's disappearance independently and was asked to keep the news quiet upon contacting NBC, said John Daniszewski, the AP's vice president and senior managing editor.

"A general principle of our reporting is that we don't want to write stories that are going to endanger the lives of the people that we are writing about," Daniszewski said. The first few days after an abduction are often crucial to securing the captive's release.

In any case, he said, the AP never had enough information to report to its standards. "The fragmentary information we did receive was not solid or sourced in a way we could use. We had no actual news to report until they got out on Tuesday and NBC went public with the story," he said.

CBS News also said that it had honored NBC's request, but a spokeswoman declined to discuss it. ABC, Fox News and CNN were also contacted by NBC.

CNN, in an editor's note affixed to a website story on Engel's escape, noted NBC's request. CNN said it complied to allow fact-finding and negotiations to free the captors before it became a worldwide story.

"Hostage negotiators say that once the global spotlight is on the missing, the hostages' value soars, making it much harder to negotiate their freedom," CNN said.

For similar reasons, the AP did not report its own news several years ago when a photographer was kidnapped in the Gaza Strip, securing his release within a day. In one celebrated case of secrecy, The New York Times withheld news that reporter David Rohde was kidnapped while trying to make contact with a Taliban commander in Afghanistan. Rohde escaped after seven months in captivity.

It wasn't clear whether Engel's abductors knew what they had at the time. That knowledge, CNN argued, could have greatly complicated any negotiations. In this case, the captors did not make any ransom demands during the time he was missing.

This isn't simply a professional courtesy; the AP has withheld news involving overseas contractors in the past, Daniszewski said. For similar reasons, the organization does not reveal details of military or police actions it learns about beforehand if the news will put people at risk, and doesn't write about leaders heading into war zones until they are safely there.